Dreaming of an Ideal World!!!

Like everyone else, I watched for the release of Sony Reader Touch with great enthusiasm.   Though I prefer to read while traveling and during my free time, I was not sure that I will be that comfortable with a digital device.  I checked out Sony PRS-505 at Staples and I must say that I was very impressed with the display quality.  I found it more comfortable to read than the book I purchase at Jayanagar 4th block.  Look of PRS-505 accelerated my decision to go for an ebook reader.  Thought of carrying over 300 books with me while traveling was a compelling enough reason to own one immediately. 

Sony announced PRS-600 and PRS-300 at the same time.  I decided to go for PRS-600BC for the following reasons

• Touch Screen
• Free hand highlighting and note taking capabilities
• Built-in dictionary
• Multiple format support

The last one was the decision point when I have to choose between Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader.

I received my Sony Reader (after some struggle due to back orders) just before I left Utah.  I was hoping that I can use the Reader as a tool for my references, like read through multiple books, mark sections, refer them back etc.  I realized after using ti for a couple of days that, eBook Readers are best used just as a Reader. It’s slow to skip through pages and highlight (on screen writing works pretty well though).  I switched to using this just as a Reader now. 

I’ve been using the Reader for over two months now.  I’m very used to with the Reader and its there always with me when ever I go out.   Here are my observations….

Good Stuff first…

• Small and convenient to carry around
• Can be used for taking small notes
• Over 350 books with you always
• Supports PDF

And things that I don’t like

• While PRS-505 looks better than real paper, PRS-600 has a lot of touch screen glare.  Its difficult to read in a room with fluorescent light.
• PDF docs needs to be zoomed for better readability. You can’t copy text in this mode.
• Music and image quality is not great.

Operating System Supported

You need Sony’s application to purchase ebook from Sony’s ebook store.  I wish I never have to use this software.  Sony supports only windows platform.  I took almost an hour to figure out how to transfer some files to the device.
I searched around for a linux client before I purchased the Reader.  Calibre is much better than Sony’s own software (except that you can’t purchase books) and supports multiple platforms.  I use my linux laptop to manage the device completely using Calibre.

I’m very happy with my PRS-600BC.  Its very handy and convenient with its leather book like cover.  I already finished 4 books (including the Lost Symbol!!!) already and I’m afraid that I’m getting addicted to the Reader.  However, I would recommend PRS-505 anytime if you are not very interested in dictionary, online note taking etc.

Rajesh brought this news to my notice.  This is interesting for me as Gizmo5 is my VoIP provider and Google Voice provides me connectivity to all US numbers which I bridged through my Gizmo5 account.  Great to see this development.

I’m just back from a business trip.  I had to be in 5 different timezones in the last 2 months.  The most annoying thing was to change timezones in each of my desktop and web applications.  For eg.

• Google Calendar
• Google Voice (Funny that these two are still not integrated)
• Gizmo VoIP  
• Desktop applications
• System Date and Time
• GroupWise
• Thunderbird lightning

Why can’t they all read my primary timezone from my desktop and give my an option to set it accordingly. I wish HTML5 has an option for webservices to read your local time and set if required.

Agile development methods are overly hyped; probably after cloud!!!.  I happened to read SKORKS today.  I agree with his observation, ie. measuring velocity does not replace planning and scheduling on an agile project.  Velocity is just a metric to measure team productivity.  I would compare this to kloc or design complexity metrics of the traditional development.  One difference is that velocity should always be measured in the team level and so, a constant team is more important.  I heard people talking about shuffling people in a team.  The team velocity is invalid or useless if  team members change constantly in a team.  Once indication of team getting a good grasp of the project is the constantly increasing velocity in the initial phase of the project.  As Alan Skorkin says, a proper estimation process is a must to achieve good and consistent velocity for a team.  More about this later…

Jon shared this blog two days back.  I could relate to many things that we do in the organization.  I was also surprised to see some of my thinking patterns reflected in the blog.  Some of the points I particularly liked in the context of software development are:

• Majority of people will be most advanced beginners in a particular skill
• being an expert in one skill might make you competent and proficient in in dozen others (in a lighter note, if I know how to debug on one platform, I can do it on any!!!)
• Treat your junior team members in a similar fashion as you would your experts and show them the big picture

What do you think???

Here is a WikiPedia reference to Dreyfus model of skill acquisition for the more enthusiasts.

Google’s acquisition of Grand Central a while ago was seen as a smart move by industry.  They took almost two years to invite fresh accounts to try out their new beta program, . The good thing about Google Voice (for that matter Grand Central) is that it lets users integrate all of their existing phone numbers and voice mailboxes into one account.  I have been using VoIP from Gizmo for more than 18  months.  I use a SIP device (Linksys ATA PAP2T) to connect my analog phone and make and receive calls as if using a regular line.  Gizmo provides the basic instructions to configure a SIP device.  BSNL blocks (I believe most of the ISPs do this) the SIP Port (5060) and fortunately, sipphone supports port 5061 also for SIP connectivity.  I also have a call in number through Gizmo so that, colleagues at US can reach me anytime. As far as mobile is concerned,  Nokia removed the native VoIP stack from N96.  However, fring is a reasonable alternative (except support for call mute, DTMF etc.)

Another pretty good collaboration by Google and Gizmo a week back added SIP support for Google Voice through Gizmo.  I just got my Google Voice and Gizmo integrated for both incoming and outgoing calls.  Google Voice call quality is amazing.  Its very easy to use and integrates well with your google address book.  Now, my next project is to get my phone, google and ovi to sync contacts and appointments so that I have a single list of contacts across all my collaboration services.

Its more like the meet the expert day of Brainshare.   Each vendors get a room where they can showcase their products and talk to customers; you can attract more people if the food and drinks are better in your room!!!

Presentations also started today.  I must admit that the sessions were targeted mostly towards CTOs and CFOs.   These are not very technical in nature, but strategic and direction centric.  There were case studies by organizations and early adopters of cloud.  The day started with a number of presentations from Burton Group on Application architecture for the cloud.  A few interesting suggestions were:

• Consumers should build their applications by consuming various services available in the cloud rather than building themselves
• Simply migrating applications is not a a Cloud Application Architecture
• Lack of clarity and hype slows adoption of cloud and increased skepticism
• Bill Peter of Intercontinental Hotels Group said SLAs not sufficient in Public, one of the main reasons they went ahead with private cloud
• Eli Lilly came up with the challenges they faced while moving to cloud

Vendor Hospitality Suites is one of the attractions for this conference.   Vendors are given a chance  to demonstrate their technologies and talk to customers here.  Novell was unveiling the Cloud Security Services.  Novell was given a room and a demo place in the interoperability lab where Novell demonstrated SSO to PivotLink through NCS.

Novell NCS Kiosk

Tom Cecere talking about NCS in the vendor lightning round

Tom Cecere explaining the product to a number of potential customers

Dale Olds and Mike from PivotLink talking to some of our Quest friends

I decided to attend a couple of sessions today.  The format of the sessions is called Workshop.  Its more like experience sharing by industry leaders and some panel discussions around the topic.  Since panel discussions can take a long time, duration of the session is 4hrs, which means one can attend only one session in the moring and one in the afternoon. 

I decided to go for cloud related sessions today.  Morning session was on Security aspects on the cloud.

• Security and Identity aspects of cloud

Presenters were from Burton Group (Dan Blum), Sun, ebay and CSA.  All are worried about security.  eBay mentioned that they encrypt the data at the source, so they are not much worried about the data security.Their main concern is performance.  They do 200 million logins a day and expect same kind of performance when they move to cloud.  Sun suggested that enterprises and cloud vendors should use industry standard provisioning and other security standards such as SPML and XACML.

• Building Applications for Deployment in the Cloud

Burton suggested that customers should build their applications by consuming various services available in the cloud rather than building themselves.  Simply migrating applications is not a cloud application architect.  They also presented a reference architecture. 

Here are some more photographs from the venue.
This is the bay (south) side of the hotel

Same side, more of the bay area

And a front view…

Lawn in front of the hotel

and an evening view of the bay area.

Burton Group Catalysts conference is an annual event which explores cutting-edge ideas, current challenges as well as emerging technologies shaping today’s and tomorrow’s enterprise. Catalyst Conference is renowned for its attendee-driven agenda, high-profile speakers, in-depth content and fiercely independent point of view.  This year, Novell is unveiling its Cloud initiatives through an interoperability demo in this conference.   This is a very important conference for us as the outcome and learnings from this conference will provide the right directions for our cloud strategy.  I’m one of the attendees from Novell with the objective of meeting with customers and partners and understand the concerns which are holding them back from moving to a cloud. 

The venue for this conference is the newly opened San Diego Bayfront.  You get a magnificent view of San Diego bay from this 30 story hotel.  I’m alloted a north-west  corner room on the  20th floor.  Here are some photographs from my room.

This is the view of the bayside.

View of downtown, next to the Bay

The train depot at the north side.

View of the Bay from level Aqua (4th floor)

Melkote is one of the sacred places in Karnataka.  It has been in our wish list to visit this place  some time.  I read a pretty detailed trip report before starting to this place yesterday.   You can see the process of  jaggery making towards the end of this report.  We visited that place too…  The fresh jaggery melts in your mouth!!!

My plan was to reach this place in 90 minutes from our house on Kanakapura road, close to NICE intersection.  I took a full 2hrs to reach here.

You can see the details of above track here.

Here are some photographs from the top of the hill.

This the view of the gopuram from one side of the hill.

No temples are complete without our friends!!!  Ignore the picture quality… This is the best I could manage with my N96 with the low light and and a bright background.

The weather was very pleasant this evening.  One thing I liked about this place is that, Melkote is still not commercialized like other temple towns.  The place is neat and not that crowded.